When upgrading to Joomla 1.6 or 1.7 from 1.5 I got the error “Your host needs to use PHP 5.2.4 or higher to run Joomla 1.7”
This problem was really perplexing me, I then happened by an article Mike G:
http://2007-2010.lovemikeg.com/2009/11/21/pro-tip-installing-php-529-on-centos/
The quick fix to get over this problem is to configure YUM to use the Dev RPM’s from the CentOS 5 Distro:
Create the repository in /etc/yum.repos.d
# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/centos-test.repo
Add the following content:
[c5-testing]
name=CentOS-5 Testing
baseurl=http://dev.centos.org/centos/5/testing/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://dev.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-testing
Run Yum:
Yum update php*
That’s it, hope it helps.